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In high school, 'The Rules' change

Pen? Pencil? Depends whose classroom you’re in. It’s enough to make a freshman’s head spin.

By LETITIA STEIN
Published August 3, 2006

VALRICO — By the light of a street lamp, Alexis Blackwood eyed the teenage boy walking toward the street corner where her school bus was supposed to stop.

Only another high-schooler would be out this early, she thought. And her mother, who didn’t want Alexis waiting alone. Not in the dark. Not on Thursday, the first morning of the school year.

“What grade?” her mother asked the boy.

“I’m a junior,” he replied.

“Lex is a freshman,” said her mother, who was rewarded with a groan and an anguished glare.

“I won’t say it again,” she promised.

Before this year, Alexis always rode the bus to school with Stephanie, her best friend. The trip only took a few miles. Now she had to go farther alone.

She didn’t think she would get into the International Baccalaureate magnet at King High School. Deciding to sign up for the challenge wasn’t hard. Nothing like finding an outfit for the first day of high school. Unable to pick, Alexis let her younger sister select jeans torn at the knee and a fitted shirt.

Now the rumble of a bus engine signaled the start of her freshman year. Alexis hugged her mother.

“Enjoy yourself,” she heard, already turning away. “Pay attention. Take notes.”

Alexis didn’t see her mother waving as the bus departed. “I don’t know why I feel like crying,” said Winnifred Blackwood, watching taillights disappear.

*** 

Raise your hand if you know anyone in the room, asked the teacher in Alexis’ first period class, Algebra II Honors.

Most hands shot up. Alexis is still.

She missed introductions in homeroom. As a magnet student, she had to catch two buses, both late. She arrived about 45 minutes after the first bell.

She is about to learn The Rules.

In math, she should keep a notebook, textbook and pencil on the desk. She must show work in pencil. “Ink is not a mathematician’s pen,” the teacher warns.

In the next period, blue or black pens are the writing instruments of choice. No pencil. “You’re in high school,” the teacher admonishes. Alexis hastily erases a form that she had begun to pencil in.

This class requires a 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 notebook. Alexis found one in pink with the right dimensions. She learns the markings on its pages are unacceptable.

By third period, she is taking notes. American Government requires a thick spiral that students will build into an “interactive notebook.” She memorizes the organizing principle: Teacher handouts attach to one side of the page.

Students materials go on the other.

By the end of the day, “I was tuning in and out,” Alexis said.

In classes, seating charts dictate where Alexis sits. Teachers assign the deadlines, test dates and homework.

Each rules until the bell rings to change class.

***

At the door, every decision becomes her own: Does she turn left or right? Go upstairs or down?

She leaves Room 420. She needs to find Room 311. She follows a throng out of a classroom wing. She tries to remember which way she walked with her family while visiting classrooms on orientation night.

“I have no idea,” she sighs.

She starts to walk across campus. She turns right. She turns right again. She’s unsure how much time she has between bells. So she keeps walking.

Suddenly, she bolts forward. She knows a face. She races to embrace a lanky boy who was a classmate but not a close friend at Mulrennan Middle School.

In high school, he’s a lifeline.

He turns Alexis around. They’re on opposite paths. He has just left the room that she needs to find. They try to exchange directions, but it’s too complicated. He grabs her purse and steers.

Alexis gets her bearings as the tardy bell rings. A teacher watches her rush past his open door and chuckles:

“They’re not going to believe your excuse.”

In Inquiry Skills, teacher Kathryn Smith seems to understand. She teaches freshman the skills they need to survive the magnet program.

“It’s probably an appropriate time to teach you at this point about the middle school lies,” she begins.
She has four:

No. 1: Your teacher likes everybody the same.

No. 2: There’s no such things as a stupid question.

No. 3: My mother will fix it for me.

No. 4: If I wrote the essay really well, my teacher won’t realize that I don’t know what I’m taking about.

She passes out a syllabus. Next week, she will begin lessons on culture. Today, she notes, students have entered a new one that’s called high school.

“What you experience right now is called culture shock,” she says. “Give yourselves a month.”

***

Postscript: Alexis survived a missed bus at the end of the day, though her mother had to come to pick her up. She got home around 6 p.m. — nearly 12 hours after leaving for the bus stop in the morning.

So after one day, what does she think?

“There’s so many people there, and it’s a whole new environment. The teachers expect so much out of you. Plus, homework on the first day.

“I heard somebody say this is end of your life now. You had all your fun in middle school.”

Her father said she’ll be fine if she does what teachers say. A sophomore on the bus told her it gets easier after the second week. She’s going to give it time.

[Last modified August 3, 2006, 23:01:12]